273 What the Oshkosh Air Show Taught Me About Building Brand Community and Culture
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
Release Date: 08/07/2024
383 Stepping Into the Mist: How to Move Forward When You Don’t Know What Comes Next
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
There’s a place just beyond the edge of what you already know how to do. I call it the mist. As farm business owners, we find ourselves there more often than we probably realize — when an opportunity shows up, when something changes, when we take a risk, or when we find ourselves doing something we’ve never done before. And the mist can feel uncomfortable. We can’t see very far ahead. We don't know exactly how things are going to turn out. And sometimes, our first instinct is to back away and return to what we know. But what if the mist isn't something to be afraid of? What if it’s...
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382 Facebook Is Limiting Your External Links. Now What?
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
What would you do if Facebook suddenly told you that you could only share two external links per month from your farm business page? That’s exactly what happened to me while I was scheduling posts for Shared Legacy Farms—and it stopped me in my tracks. For years, one of the primary jobs of my social media has been to move people off Facebook and onto my email list. But this new restriction, which appears to be rolling out to more business pages, could affect far more than email sign-up links. Think CSA registration, online stores, blog posts, recipes, YouTube videos, event registrations...
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381 The Nostalgia Effect: Why Memories Make Customers Buy
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
Sometimes customers aren't just buying the product in front of them. They're buying access to a memory. I recently bought two boxes of sugary cereal I hadn't eaten in decades—even though I don't normally buy the stuff and can't really eat it anymore. Why? Nostalgia got me. In this episode, we're digging into the psychology behind this surprisingly powerful buying trigger and why farm products are uniquely positioned to tap into it. We'll explore how taste, smell, sight, touch, and sound can bring old memories rushing back—and how you can use those sensory connections in your marketing. But...
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380 Can You Actually CREATE More Demand for Your Farm Products?
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
Can You Actually CREATE More Demand for Your Farm Products? Demand for your farm product often feels like it has a ceiling — but what if that ceiling can actually MOVE? This is part 2 of a two-part series all about Market Demand -- an important element in the sales/marketing formula. In the last episode, I talked about the danger of scaling production before you have enough demand to support it. But that raises an important question: What if you check the demand…and there simply isn't enough yet? Are you stuck with the demand you've got? Marketing can't magically make everyone want what...
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379 Got Demand? The 6 Questions to Ask Before You Grow More Farm Products
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
What happens when you’re really good at growing something… but you don’t have enough people to buy it? I learned that lesson the expensive way this summer when we ended up renting a refrigerated semi-trailer to hold thousands of pounds of watermelons we suddenly didn’t have a market for. We had successfully grown the crop, but growing it and selling it turned out to be two very different things. In this episode of My Digital Farmer, we’re exploring an important piece of the revenue equation that farmers don’t always spend enough time thinking about: demand. Before you add another...
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378 Who Should NOT Buy Your Farm Product? (A Worthy Thought Exercise)
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
We spend a lot of time defining our ideal customer, but here's a question we don't ask nearly enough: Who should NOT buy your product? If you're spending too much time answering questions, overcoming objections, or trying to convince people to buy (only to have them walk away!) you may not have a sales problem. You may have a qualification problem. In this episode, I'm sharing a recent encounter that made me realize how valuable it is to recognize our “no signals” -- the clues that someone simply isn't a good fit for what we're selling. And even better: What if our marketing could...
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377 Practical Ways to Get More Referrals From Your Farm Customers
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
Most farmers will tell you that word-of-mouth is one of their best sources of new customers. But there's a big difference between being grateful for referrals, and intentionally creating more of them. In this episode, we're talking about how to put an engine behind word-of-mouth. I'll share a whole bunch of practical ways farms can make referrals easier, more natural, and more likely to happen—without needing complicated software or some fancy loyalty program. More importantly, I'll show you how to think strategically about who you ask, when you ask, what you give customers to share, and...
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376 What Should I Call This? How to Name Farm Products (So That They Sell)
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
Could changing one word on a sign or product listing make a product sell better? Last week at our Farmer's Bag Toledo pickup, I noticed something strange happening with two kinds of onions sitting right next to each other. Customers kept choosing one—and passing over the other. Then one of our volunteers made an observation: “I wonder if it's the name.” That comment made me think, "Oh I've got to do a podcast about this!" Because as farmers, we often name our products based on what we call them -- i.e. the variety in the seed catalog, the technical name of the cut, or whatever makes...
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375 The Five Transformations Farmers Really Sell
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
What if your customers aren't actually buying your vegetables? In this episode, Corinna shares a personal story from her son's Air Force Basic Training that reinforced a key marketing principle, and it has nothing to do with farming. If you've ever struggled to know what to say in your emails, on your website, or in your social media posts, this episode will help you uncover the deeper reason people choose to buy from your farm. Eventually all business owners realize that customers don't buy products... they buy the life those products help create. You'll learn how to identify the...
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374 Behind the Launch: How Farmer's Bag Toledo Went From Idea to Sold Out
My Digital Farmer | Marketing Strategies for Farmers
How do you go from a random idea... to selling out a brand-new food access program in just a few days? In this episode, I'm pulling back the curtain on the complete behind-the-scenes story of launching The Farmer's Bag Toledo. You'll hear how one unexpected meeting planted the seed, how the right partnership changed everything, why we chose to beta test instead of trying to make it perfect, and all the practical work that happened behind the scenes -- from pricing and logistics to technology, funding, naming, messaging, and launch strategy. If you've ever had an idea sitting in your notebook...
info_outlineA few weeks ago, I drove my two boys up to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, for their annual weeklong Air Show.
The EAA Venture Air Show in Oshkosh is the largest air show in the world, and for seven days, it also becomes the busiest airport in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people visit this air show every year.
We first discovered the event a few years ago when my son Jed first started getting into aviation. Everyone told us, "You need to go to Oshkosh."
Well, they were right. If you're an aviation enthusiast, you eventually end up at Oshkosh. In fact, I would argue that it's almost the equivalent of making a holy pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
Our first trip to this aviation experience was other-worldly. It was so over-the-top, and it turned us into rabid superfans of aviation. In fact, it was SO powerful, I remember thinking, "I need to do a podcast about this. The brand culture here is so potent."
The thing about Oshkosh is that there are some very specific principles at play that are creating community and turning us plane nerds into superfans. In this podcast, I wanted to point them out to you. I show you how you can take these same principles and put them to work in your farm business, so that you create a community among your customers.
Because people come for your vegetables. They come for your meat and your flowers. But they stay for the community.
As a farm, you must learn how to build a community to achieve longevity. Oshkosh (and this podcast) will show you how. This turned into a great episode!
This podcast was sponsored by Local Line, my preferred e-commerce platform for farmers. Are you looking for a new solution for your farm? I can't recommend it enough. Easy to use inventory management, great customer service, continuous improvement, and a culture dedicated to equipping farmers with marketing expertise, Local Line should definitely be one of the e-commerce solutions you consider as you switch. Local Line is offering a free premium feature for free for one year on top of your paid subscription. Claim your discount by signing up for a Local Line account today and using the coupon code: MDF2024. Head to my special affiliate link to get started: www.mydigitalfarmer.com/localline
Some of the resources mentioned in this episode:
Join my free email list! I have a great "Crash Course in farm marketing" that will guide you through the marketing jungle over the course of several months. Each week, you'll get a new email with suggestions and tips to make your marketing better. Subscribe at https://www.mydigitalfarmer.com/subscribe
Episode 203: How to Build a Glamping Enterprise on Your Farm -- Everything You Need to Know with Kasey Marshall - I mention our vacation to Canada to see the Cold Lake Air Show, and our hosts Kasey and Renaud Marshall at 350Farms! Kasey was on my podcast last year to talk about their glamping operation. If you want to learn how to set up a glamping operation, THIS IS THE PODCAST to listen to.
Farm Marketing School - my monthly online marketing school membership just for farmers. Farm Marketing School is an on-demand library of marketing workshops and project plans that will help you build some of the most important marketing elements in your farm business like: building a promotion calendar, setting up your Google Business Profile, auditing your sales funnel, updating your home page of your website, building your first email nurture sequence, acquiring and deploying testimonials, and practicing different types of offers. You get to chose what you want to study and build each month. These projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days, so that you slowly build your marketing system piece by piece. Use the step by step project planner and resource folder to help you jumpstart your work. Take advantage of my new marketing crash course inside or take the onboarding assessment tool to help you identify where your funnel is broken and what project to do first. To see what courses are currently inside of FMS, or to try out Farm Marketing School for a month at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms Start and cancel your membership anytime.
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